ADHD entrepreneurs - We're gonna talk you through how to go from 'oops!' to purposeful business success!
Welcome back to another episode of Weeniecast! I'm your host, Katie McManus and this episode, we're talking about the unpredictable journey of entrepreneurship.
Let's get started on some insights on intentional business beginnings, overcoming doubts, and finding your tribe!
Unintentional Start, Intentional Commitment
I’m planning on taking you through the intriguing paradox of unintentional business starts.
Many of us have stumbled into ventures without a grand plan, but I want to underscore the significance of commitment once you've taken the plunge.
We’ll discuss Hernan Cortez and how his burning ships are actually quite the business lesson.
Dark? Yes. Unpleasant and hard to stomach? Of course.
But the lesson's there - ensured success is the only path forward.
Watch the episode promo
The Heart of Purposeful Entrepreneurship
My own journey of discovering purpose in my business is a story I’ve decided to share in the hope it resonates deeply. I’ll recount my first year and a half of hesitant commitment while simultaneously job hunting.
I explain why I’m all about the essence of intentionality in business.
Unlike parenting where "oopsies" happen, a business needs a purposeful blueprint. And I’m here for you Weenie, offering assurance that your purpose-driven venture won't meet the same fate as many unplanned endeavors.
The Mighty Impact of Support
I’ll talk about the transformative power of seeking guidance during hurdles in business expansion.
I’ll tell you why relinquishing your entrepreneurial dream for a standard job is not the way.
And I’ll guide you on how to avoid being brought down by your quitting peers and friends.
Thoughts on the episode? Leave us a voicemail!
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The key moments in this episode are:
00:02:50 Unintentional entrepreneurs fear failure for survival.
00:04:54 Passion for business ensures success; burn those ships.
00:09:01 Approach to parenting = approach to business.
00:10:17 Unfollow negative friends; focus on success.
00:16:08 The value in accountability.
00:18:02 ADHD: Familiar struggle with no progress.
The next steps for you after you’ve listened to this episode are:
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[00:00:00] do you have an oops business or an on purpose business? A lot of people talk about how their business is their child. And when you think about children, you think about on purpose children and oops children. The result can be a little different. I personally would prefer to be a child [00:00:20] that was had on purpose.
[00:00:21] To parents who really wanted to be parents and thankfully I was, and I'm so grateful to my parents for being those people they end to be the unhappy, but now happy accident between two people that weren't really planning on it, but just kind of went along with it.
[00:00:39] [00:00:40] Whereas some people are forced to be parents by the circumstances of their life, it is really hard to be forced to be a business owner. Once you get pregnant, you really don't like, unless you have, unless you, once you get pregnant, unless you make a decision otherwise, which I fully support you to do, you really [00:01:00] don't have any way of preventing that baby from growing inside of you.
[00:01:03] And then eventually, you know, after 40 weeks, that baby coming out of you. Which does not sound fun. And then just being a baby in your house that turns into a toddler, that turns into a child, that turns into a preteen, and then a teen, and then an adult. Ipso facto, you are a parent, you [00:01:20] obviously, there is a ton of work that goes into it, but it's not like that you, it's not like if you don't show up to parent work that day, your five year old's going to not age a day.
[00:01:33] Right?
[00:01:39] If you phone it [00:01:40] in for a few months, it's not like your five year old is going to stay that one age and not, and not progress in their development. Your business cannot do this. Your business will not grow like a child, just on its own. Your business does need a lot of attention, like children, [00:02:00] but it requires attention in order for it to grow.
[00:02:05] Now, why am I talking about oops babies and oops businesses and the difference between the two? Because we are coming out of the pandemic and we're seeing all the oops businesses That came about because people were [00:02:20] laid off from their job and they really didn't have any other options to bring money into their households.
[00:02:25] We're seeing a lot of these people quitting and going back to their nine to five because they weren't in it to become an entrepreneur. They weren't in it to become a business owner. They needed money. They were laid off from a job. They had a set of skills. [00:02:40] There has to be a Liam Neeson thing, like, I have a very particular set of skills.
[00:02:52] What I do have is a very particular set of skills. Skills that I have acquired over a very long career.
[00:02:58] So these incredible [00:03:00] humans who had to figure out a way to make money come into their homes to support themselves and their families throughout a very, very turbulent time in our world history. They didn't mean to start a business. They weren't in it for that.
[00:03:14] And it's. It's obvious now that we are seeing them dropping their businesses and going back [00:03:20] to a nine to five job because that is ultimately what makes them feel happy, safe, and secure. As business owners, however, who are in it to win it, who are super passionate about what we do, this can be really scary.
[00:03:35] Seeing other people have to quit their businesses because it's not going well enough for them to [00:03:40] survive gets you all flipped out about what you believe is possible for your business. It's kind of like when you hear someone your age was diagnosed with a really scary form of cancer. Your brain can't help but wonder, what about me?
[00:03:58] What if that happened to me? [00:04:00] What if that happened to my husband or my wife or my sister or my brother?
[00:04:04] Our brains do this really awesome fucked up thing where it scans the world for all the scariest things that could possibly happen to us and then starts playing out the what if scenario. And this is a survival mechanism. This has been happening since the beginning of time, and it's [00:04:20] the reason we're still kicking around on this planet and ruining it.
[00:04:23] Because our ancestors walked out of their home cave and scanned the horizon for hungry tigers rather than looking for all the pretty flowers.
[00:04:32] The cave people who walked out of their cave and didn't scan for tigers, they got eaten.
[00:04:38] Can we do, can we do sound effects [00:04:40] of like someone screaming and a tiger?
[00:04:42] And
[00:04:50] seeing other people make this decision of quitting their businesses and going back to a nine to five can make you question if you're really meant to do this. Even if [00:05:00] you are destined to be successful in this business
[00:05:02] there's a big differentiator between people who think it would be cool to start a business or it's necessary for them to start a business and those who don't have a choice. And when I say they don't have a choice, I don't mean they're backed into a corner and this is the only thing that they can do to be able to [00:05:20] put food on the table.
[00:05:21] I mean, That literally their spirit will not be fulfilled if they don't go and do this brave thing by becoming an entrepreneur.
[00:05:31] One of the questions that I sometimes ask when I'm on a strategy call or a sales call with a potential client is, would you be able [00:05:40] to put this business down and walk away from it and never touch it again? What would it take for you to do that?
[00:05:47] And the correct answer to this question that I'm looking for is no, I wouldn't be able to. I am so passionate about doing this work, [00:06:00] and providing this service, and offering this help to the world, and owning my life in a way that being a business owner will allow me to do. I will never be able to walk away from it.
[00:06:13] I'm going to find a way to make it work,
[00:06:15] and I just need help to get there.
[00:06:18] That's the business [00:06:20] equivalent of having a child on purpose.
[00:06:22] Now, the reason I only want clients who are driven on a deeper level to start this business. Whatever it is, is because I know that they're going to succeed because they haven't given themselves another option.
[00:06:36] There is this pop up workshop that I ran once during the [00:06:40] pandemic and I wish I'd kept the notes of it. It was literally something I planned in 20 minutes, did, and then completely forgot didn't remember to go and save the recording. And it was all about the ships that you have to burn in order to be successful.
[00:06:55] Now I went through the laundry list of quote unquote ships that I had to burn. If you [00:07:00] don't get that reference, a really evil man named Cortez sailed from Europe to the new world and massacred a bunch of people, right? He did so successfully because when they landed on the beach in the new world, he had his people burn their ships, which basically drove them fight harder and kill more people.[00:07:20]
[00:07:20] And succeed in winning because they had no other option if they wanted to get home because they didn't have boats to retreat to. So I really don't like where this metaphor comes from, if you can't tell by the tone of my voice, but it's a great metaphor for what it takes to be successful. The most successful [00:07:40] entrepreneurs are the ones who don't have ships waiting by their beach.
[00:07:44] The first year and a half of me starting my business. And I say, starting my business, it did not go well. It wasn't like this was a successful business overnight. And I posit that the reason for that was that I was still looking for a job. I would spend several hours a day working in [00:08:00] my business on my business.
[00:08:02] And after hustling for a little bit. I'd head over to the job boards, I'd look at Glassdoor, I'd look at LinkedIn, look at Indeed. I'd look to see what jobs were available in my area. I might even submit some applications to a couple just in case this business didn't work out.[00:08:20]
[00:08:20] Guess what? The business didn't work out for that first year and a half because I wasn't fully betting on it. I was actually betting on it to fail because I had all these other irons in the fire.
[00:08:31] I had a plan B, a plan C, a plan Z, all lined
[00:08:36] up in case this didn't work out. It wasn't until I [00:08:40] deleted my accounts on those platforms, on Indeed, on Glassdoor, and until I said that I was no longer looking for a job on LinkedIn that I actually started getting high paying clients. That I actually started making a full time income from doing this work that I love.[00:09:00]
[00:09:02] I had to be that entrepreneur on purpose
[00:09:06] because let's face it if we're comparing me to a parent, if we were comparing early business me to a parent, I was basically like the auntie who was babysitting a lot, trying on being a parent. Taking her niece to the [00:09:20] playground. Dropping off her cousins at school. Picking them up. Maybe going to Little League a little bit. Talking a lot about wanting to be a mom. What it'll be like when I am. But not actually doing it.
[00:09:31] Because once you actually do become pregnant. Once you actually do commit to becoming a mom. Once it happens. There's really no turning back.[00:09:40]
[00:09:40] It's the same for your business. If you actually want this, if you want this business to be able to support you, to help you have a life where you're thriving and not just surviving, this has to be a 110% hell yes.
[00:09:56] It can't be a, well, if it happens, it happens. I [00:10:00] won't stop it.
[00:10:00] And I bet we can all count a ton of parents that we know on all of our hands, all of our fingers and all of our toes who had that approach to having children who are probably amazing parents now who have really happy, healthy children. But that same approach is not going to work in growing your business.
[00:10:18] So now that [00:10:20] we are seeing. All of these oopsie businesses shutting down and their owners going back to a nine to five, dropping it, like basically putting this business in the orphanage. Like, we're no longer interested. It can be really triggering because we're seeing this happen and thinking, Oh [00:10:40] my God, like, what if I'm forced into the same corner and I just want you to know.
[00:10:45] That the fact that you did this on purpose, the fact that this is your baby, this is the thing that you did on purpose, that you are doing consistently every single day because you want to grow it, because you really have no other [00:11:00] choice, because on a soul level this is your calling, that's never going to happen to you.
[00:11:07] There may be walls that you hit and ceilings that you bump up against that limit how much money you make. You may need some help to get to the next level and that's perfectly normal. It does not mean that you [00:11:20] are failing. It does not mean that you're going to have to pack it in and go back to a nine to five that made you miserable unless that's really what you want.
[00:11:30] In which case I take back the miserable part because hopefully you'll be really happy.
[00:11:34] And this may sound harsh. But those friends, those [00:11:40] colleagues, the people that you follow on Instagram and LinkedIn and Facebook who are packing it in, who are shutting their doors and going back to their nine to five and talking about how hard it was to start a business and how it just, they didn't have what it took and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
[00:11:56] You need to unfollow them
[00:11:57] because what that [00:12:00] messaging is going to do is it's going to poison the well of your brain. It's going to start you down this pathway of focusing on all the scary things that come up in your business, all the hard aspects, everything that makes this too difficult to continue, and you're going to start looking for evidence that you too [00:12:20] can no longer do this.
[00:12:22] That you'll also fail that you'll also have to go back to a nine to five.
[00:12:27] I want you to tune out from the messaging that they're putting out. And I want you to tune into messaging from people who are fully committed to their businesses.
[00:12:37] To the people who are entrepreneurs on [00:12:40] purpose, because they almost couldn't, because they literally couldn't help themselves, but to do this calling.
[00:12:47] And I want to be very clear here. I'm not saying entrepreneurs on purpose. I'm saying business owners on purpose, because there are a lot of business owners who don't see themselves as [00:13:00] entrepreneurs. An entrepreneur is someone who starts multiple businesses. Who's always onto the next thing that might not be you.
[00:13:07] And that's okay. You don't have to be a lot of my clients who are massively successful are accidental on purpose, business owners. And what does that mean? It means that they discovered their life's [00:13:20] calling like leadership coaching or technical copywriting and they loved it so much, but no one was really hiring for it.
[00:13:30] And if they weren't paying the amount of money that they wanted to make. So in order, so for, so in order for them to make the [00:13:40] income that they wanted and have the impact that they wanted to make on the world, they had to start a business.
[00:13:45] The key here is that they couldn't not do the thing.
[00:13:52] Those are the people you need to be tuning into.
[00:13:54] You want to follow them. You want to comment on their stuff. You want to like [00:14:00] everything that they post. You want to train all the algorithms to show you more and more and more of that
[00:14:05] because as you surround yourself with these other business owners on purpose.
[00:14:11] You're going to start seeing other opportunities rather than evidence that this isn't going to work for you.
[00:14:16] You're going to see a post by someone saying that they're starting a speaking tour [00:14:20] and your ADHD hyper focus is going to get completely clicked on and you're going to go down a wormhole of, Oh my God, that sounds so interesting. Let me see how I can do that myself.
[00:14:32] You're going to see another colleague starting a group program.
[00:14:36] And it's going to inspire you to figure out how [00:14:40] you can roll out a group program for your business as well.
[00:14:43] Ultimately you want to remember that we are all the sum total the average of the five people we spend the most time with And this doesn't just mean people that we hang out with at night. This also means the people that we spend our working hours with.
[00:14:58] I remember when I first [00:15:00] started my business or I first, not even started my business. When I first started coaching, I decided to start this mastermind group with a bunch of other coaches that were in my program. And it was really sad because none of us knew what we were doing. We were all so afraid of putting ourselves out there.
[00:15:19] Like [00:15:20] the idea of posting anything to social media about the fact that we were coaching and offering sessions and, taking money for this work that we loved was absolutely terrifying to all of us. So none of us did it. So we spent all of our time on these mastermind calls thinking of bullshit work.
[00:15:38] Sorry, I just hiccuped. [00:15:40] Thinking of bullshit work that we could spend our time on rather than actually going out there and doing stuff that would actually get us clients. And after a couple months of this, those calls stopped being about, well, what bullshit work can I come up with? And started becoming all of our...
[00:15:59] And evolved [00:16:00] into, oh my God, this is so hard. This is so hard. I don't have any clients. Do you have any clients? You don't have any clients. Oh God, this is really hard. And it would basically be this little bitch fest.
[00:16:12] I'll call it what it is.
[00:16:19] And it really didn't [00:16:20] help any of us move the needle in our business.
[00:16:22] I realized that these calls weren't serving me. And I also, no, it was funny because in these calls I would hear other people complaining about how hard it was to sell coaching or market themselves. And I would hear myself give them this incredible advice that was based on [00:16:40] all of my years of experience in sales and marketing and in creating membership prices and earn, I'm sorry.
[00:16:47] And how to create packages that were based off of the membership model from gyms that I'd worked in previously. And I remember giving them this advice and being like, wow, that was good advice. I should take that advice on [00:17:00] my own. And the call would end and we'd go about our weeks and we'd come back the next week and I'd ask them, did you do what I told you to do?
[00:17:11] And they'd say, no. And I get frustrated. And then they'd bring up their problem, they'd [00:17:20] complain a little bit more, and I'd complain a little bit more, and I'd give them some really good advice on things that they should do. And again, we'd break for the week and we'd all do our separate things and then we'd come back and again, they hadn't done what I told them to do and I hadn't done what I told them to do.
[00:17:37] And I realized towards the end of this, the [00:17:40] lifespan of this mastermind, that if I could see it so clearly for other people, I really need to start following my own advice. Now, part of this is I had to get a coach who would actually hold me accountable to doing things because if you know, having ADHD, I'm sorry, my, my chair is making noise [00:18:00] because as you can imagine, having ADHD, it's really easy to come up with ideas for scary things to do.
[00:18:08] Actually doing them requires someone else checking in on you to make sure that you actually follow through.
[00:18:15] the other element that really helped me be successful and break out of this [00:18:20] vortex of suckery I co created with my fellow coaches is when I was working with a coach, I almost needed constant permission to do things in my business. I needed permission to go and post something on social media [00:18:40] because I wasn't seeing anyone in my world doing that.
[00:18:44] I needed permission to go and host a webinar because I didn't know anyone who'd ever hosted a webinar. I needed permission to come up with a website because I didn't know anyone who'd actually made a website for a coaching business. Because who was [00:19:00] I? To go out there and say that I do this thing, who is I to go and bug people who know me from high school and college and previous jobs with this information on my business that I was starting?
[00:19:11] I didn't want to annoy them.
[00:19:13] And while, yes, I had invested a good almost 20, 000 into becoming a coach, [00:19:20] who is I to go and turn around and share any of that knowledge that I just learned?
[00:19:25] Now, imagine what would be different if I had just stayed in that little vortex of suckery. If I continued meeting with these people who I absolutely adore to this day, but we'd continue to talk about how hard it is and how we [00:19:40] weren't getting anywhere and boohoo, woe is us. What's some more bullshit work that we can spend time on that won't actually move the needle for us?
[00:19:48] Nothing. I would have had to resort back to my plan B, plan C, plan X of going back to a nine to five that would have ultimately made me miserable. And [00:20:00] probably burn me out and then I'd probably only last a year and then I have to switch to another nine to five and then another and then another and you continue this whole story that I had in my head that I couldn't commit to anything, which if that, which probably sounds familiar to you.
[00:20:13] Cause this is really common for people with ADHD